


Don't Ask How The Job Interview Went

by Nautilusopus



Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2019 [6]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Hogwarts Fourth Year, Not Canon Compliant, Technically Unfinished, i firmly hold that cloud is great with kids but also mildly intimidated by them, magic headcanons, no betas here we die like men, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher isn't theworstthey've had, but then that bar's pretty low to begin with. At least he's interesting.(Written for FFVII Halloween Week: Day 6 - Free Day)





	Don't Ask How The Job Interview Went

**Author's Note:**

> So this is tragically unfinished but I'm out of time, which is a shame because I have like six half-finished sequences that had to be cut for this thing to function as a whole. Will probably come back to this, but in the meantime I have a pumpkin to carve and I've been sitting at this stupid computer for twelve hours. 
> 
> About the only thing no one seems to have covered yet is witches and wizards, and this is where my brain went immediately.

The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher didn't look like he belonged here _at all. _

Harry had been secretly hoping that, upon opening the classroom door, he would somehow find Professor Lupin ready and waiting for his gaggle of unruly fourth years to file in, against all odds. So it wasn't really a surprise to have it confirmed that yes, Lupin had in fact been sacked, and yes, there was a new professor in his place. Harry wasn't necessarily disappointed, since it hadn't been a realistic thing to hope for in the first place. Ron, for his part, was all but convinced the rumours about the job being jinxed were true at this point.

What _did _surprise him was the fact that the man was draped over his chair with his feet propped up on the desk, snoring loudly, a thin stream of spittle making its way down his cheek. He seemed much too young, too -- Harry thought he couldn't have been much older than Ron's brother Bill, and the plain black robe he'd thrown on seemed like more a formality than anything else given he was wearing what looked like Muggle work clothes underneath, blond flyaway hair ungroomed, the remains of what was clearly his lunch and a small pile of twigs scattered across his desk. In turn, the classroom was devoid of any decoration that could've given them any hints as to who the man was, and Harry was half convinced he'd wandered into the wrong classroom and dozed off.

"Bit of a step down from Lupin," said Ron. "D’you suppose if he doesn’t wake up we can leave?”

The professor(?) snorted loudly at Ron’s voice and blearily cracked an eye open before Harry had a chance to respond, earning Ron a handful of dirty looks from the other students.

“He can’t be worse than Lockhart,” said Hermione, as Harry noticed with a pang of dismay that all the safest seats in the back had been taken. “Law of large numbers -- _eventually_ we’re bound to start getting good teachers, don’t you think?”

“We’re not here early, are we?” muttered Harry, as he watched the man fumble around in his desk before removing a piece of chalk, swearing under his breath. Hermione might have tricked them into it, certainly, but now the Slytherins were filing in as well, looking just as bemused as he did.

“Dumbledore’s stellar hiring standards, at it again,” he heard Malfoy sneer from behind him, and Harry couldn’t help but privately agree, as he watched the man scrawl **PROFESSOR CLOUD STRIFE** on the blackboard in blocky, uneven handwriting.

“Right -- I’m assuming you can all read,” said the new professor, Strife, in a peculiar sort of northern accent. He pointed at the board. “That’s me. I’ll be teaching you all Defense Against the Dark Arts for the year.” He shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve ever taught anything before, but first time for everything.”

Next to him, Harry watched Ron mouth _are you joking_, and he heard Pansy Parkinson titter behind him.

Strife continued, now erasing his name from the board and replacing it with a crudely drawn anatomical sketch of an arm. “Good news for you all if I turn out to be rubbish, I’m only gonna be here for just the one year. Dumbledore was nice enough to offer me a job until I can figure out how to get back home… somehow.” He mumbled the last bit quietly to himself, before shrugging and turning around. “Any questions?”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” blurted Seamus, amidst the hush the room had instantly taken on. They were distinctly glowing in the faint light of the classroom.

“Accident when I was younger,” said Strife curtly, in a tone that left no room for follow-up. “Anything else?”

The class remained silent.

“Great. So -- everyone can put their wands away,” began Strife. “I, er… lost mine, so I don’t have it. Won’t have time to get a new one until next week.” Harry exchanged a look with Ron, and Hermione looked utterly scandalised. “Good news is, we won’t be needing wands this lesson anyway.”

Ron had already preemptively shifted into an optimal stealth-napping position at the prospect of a purely textbook-based lesson, but then Strife continued, and Harry found himself interested in spite of himself.

“Your previous professor left a few notes, and from my, er… understanding of the situation, you guys didn’t really cover much in the way of defending yourselves from other people. So…” Strife snatched up one of the twigs from his desk and leveled it at the crowd of students, as though to cast a spell with it. “Say I’m about to attack you. What are some options you have of getting my -- erm -- my wand away from me?”

Harry was the first to raise his hand, and Strife nodded and gestured at him with his “wand”.

“You there, uh…?”

“...Potter, sir,” Harry offered, as Hermione stared quizzically at Strife along with the rest of the class, likely wondering what manner of rock he lived under. Not that Harry minded not being ogled at for a change, but…

“Potter,” repeated Strife, nodding. “You need to get my wand away from me. Options?”

“The Disarming Charm,” said Harry, as he realised this man was shorter than Ron, and once again wondered if this wasn’t an elaborate prank set up by a Hufflepuff Prefect.

“Good answer, if a little on the nose, I guess,” replied Strife. “Anyone else? You, in the back --”

“Draco Malfoy, sir,” said Malfoy, still too perturbed over how the lesson had played out so far to look as smug as he usually did. “A Stunning Spell.”

“Also a good option,” said Strife. “Disarming’s good, incapacitation’s better. Five points each to, er…” He paused, then, his eyes glazing over. “...Red house and snake house.”

And before anyone could unpack _that_ statement, he immediately followed it up with, “Now let’s pretend none of you have wands.” He flicked the twig again in an imitation of a threatening manner. “Now what?”

The class went silent again. Hermione’s hand shot up.

“Name?”

“Granger, sir,” said Hermione. “There’s wandless magic, but I thought we weren’t learning that until our fifth year -- are we --?”

“...Another five points for Gryffindorf,” said Strife, his lips quirking into a small smile. “I guess so, yeah, but not in the first lesson.” He shrugged, and conjured up a lick of flame between his fingers -- wandlessly and nonverbally -- and jerked his wrist, causing it to scatter and light several more candles placed about the room. Harry surmised it was probably just raw magical talent that had gotten him the job, because it certainly wasn’t any potential he had as a teacher.

“Need a bit more light for this,” muttered Strife to himself, before proceeding. “So -- I have a wand and you don’t. And you’re all… twelve?” He frowned again, craning his neck back towards his desk to check a sheet of paper there. “Shit -- fourteen. You’re all fourteen and don’t know, er… wandless magic yet. Which is a little weird, I guess, since where I’m from everyone does. You guys are _way_ too dependent on those things, so that’s where we’ll start.”

Another murmur of disbelief went through the class, cut through by Harry’s least favourite phrase to hear in a Defense Against the Dark Arts class ever since Lockhart -- “Could I have a volunteer come to the front, please? And bring your wand.”

The seconds continued to tick by, and no one stood up. Strife sighed.

“If no one volunteers, I’m just gonna have to pick someone, I can’t exactly demo this myself -- Malfoy, since you’re in the mood for sharing, up front.”

Malfoy, who had been in the process of saying something no doubt snide to Crabbe, suddenly blanched and slowly stood before making his way to the blackboard.

“Right.” Strife tossed his twig back onto his desk before rotating his neck, working out the kinks. Harry watched him toss his robe aside as he walked a few paces away, then turned back to Malfoy.

“As everyone can see, he’s armed, I’m not.” Then to Malfoy, he said, “Go ahead and try to incapacitate me in any way you like. If you pull it off, I’ll obviously have to give everyone the rest of the period off as long as you call me a medic before you go.”

Harry barely had time to consider the ramifications of actually _wanting_ Malfoy to succeed at something (though he imagined Hermione’s feelings toward him hadn’t changed one bit) before Malfoy had opened his mouth.

“_Stupe_ \--”

He never had the chance to finish. Strife had lunged, stepping into Malfoy’s space before jerking his wrist into a position that had him letting out a surprised yelp, his grip involuntarily loosening on the wand before it clattered to the floor.

The whole thing was over in less than a second. No one quite knew how to respond.

“Now neither of us have a wand,” said Strife. “And I have the element of surprise.” He retrieved Malfoy’s wand from the floor and handed it back to him. “The most important rule to remember in situations like this -- there’s no such thing as playing dirty. If you’re in danger and you see a way to level the playing field, you do it.”

“...I’m sorry, are you teaching us _Muggle_ dueling?” said Malfoy, staring at Strife in consternation.

“What the hell is a Muggle?” asked Strife. “Actually forget about that, and keep your arm still -- I gotta show everyone that in slow motion. So, you see how his fingers relax the more his arm curls in? Or -- I guess we’re facing the wrong way. Other arm, Malfoy. Okay, so you see --”

Ron was the first one taking fascinated notes, with Hermione still stuck staring blankly at Strife along with the rest of the class, and it wasn’t long before Strife had passed out twigs to the rest of the class, ordering them to practise in pairs. Harry decided this was definitely a welcome improvement from Cornish pixies.

* * *

It wasn’t long before Cloud had racked up his first complaint, arriving neatly on the desk in Dumbledore’s office. The man sighed as he read the “concerned” letter, and wondered if perhaps hiring someone based off an extremely impressive display of wandless magic alone might not have been the best idea.

* * *

“I figure it’s best to get some theory out of the way before we start practising spells,” said Strife, the next time they’d met. Unlike the previous week, once they’d gotten practising the odd jointlock thing they’d learned, this truly was a notes-only class. This one, too, was fascinating in spite of that, though perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

Strife had _absolutely no idea_ how magic worked.

“So, all magic is on a spectrum, right?” said Strife. “Between control -- the willpower needed to make the spell happen in the first place, and precision, which is the amount of mental fine-tuning and focus needed for the spell to have any effect. White magic is usually on the precision end of the spectrum, and Black magic trends towards control -- of course, Summoning is really the only branch of magic that requires a whole lot of both, and a summoning gone wrong can easily kill you if you don’t have the energy to sustain it --”

No one was taking notes anymore. Ron was trying very hard not to laugh, and Harry himself was wondering if perhaps he should mention that he’d been attempting (and failing) Summoning Charms all week, and was alive and well. Neville was next to him looking simultaneously completely out of his depth, and relieved at the fact that he clearly wasn’t the only one this time. Parvati had leaned in to mutter to Lavender as both of them cast furtive glances about the massive sword kept propped up against the desk, and while Harry was almost certain Strife had looked directly at them twice, he had yet to interrupt his own rambling monologue.

“-- and innate magic’s the kind that kicks in as a fight-or-flight response. Everything else is just a result of accessing the memory of a spell from materia so many times it becomes your own memory, and that’s what we call a ‘Mastered’ spell -- you, er…” Strife glanced nervously between the befuddled students. “Sorry, I must’ve forgotten to mention to take notes. This’ll be on the test, so…”

Then his eyes narrowed, and the game of exploding snap that Dean and Seamus had been playing in the back of the class was suddenly encased in a solid block of ice with a casual wave of Strife’s hand. “Hopefully that’ll be melted by the time my class is over, after which point you can pick up where you left off and play all the card games you like. Ten points from Gryffleclaw.”

“...Gryffindor, Professor Strife,” said Hermione meekly.

“What the fuck ever,” grunted Strife, as Hermione bristled and Harry thought that surely -- _surely_ \-- someone that good at wandless magic had to have at least _some_ understanding of what was fueling it -- surely?

“It’s a common misconception that White magic is entirely defensive, and Black magic is offensive. Not always true, though -- Poisoning spells are considered White, and Barrier spells are Black. Your Stunning Spells -- that’s Black magic if I’ve ever seen it.” Strife shrugged. “It all boils down to the same moral panic around Black magic that’s been around forever. Can’t believe you guys still call it ‘dark’. I checked the curriculum, you know, and apparently none of you even have a unit on defense against White magic. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” He returned to the board and began listing things that were certainly not spells, like _fire_ and _ice_ and _ultima_ and _time_. “Copy this into your notes -- and keep in mind you’ll all be expected to know which spell belongs in which category, and _yes_ Time magic is classified as Black, and no I will _not_ accept White as a correct answer for it regardless of what anyone on the other side of the debate tells you...“

Hermione was fuming by the time they got out of class.

“-- no respect for the field,” she ranted, “he doesn’t even have a _wand_, he’s _clearly_ never read the text book _he assigned_ \-- probably never read a single book in his life --”

“You’re just bitter you can’t answer all his questions before he asks them this time,” said Ron.

“Because they’re all _nonsense_!” said Hermione.

“Look at it this way,” said Harry. “It’s the quietest I’ve heard Malfoy yet.”

And it was, if only because he, like the rest of them, were too befuddled to focus on anything but the utter nonsense coming out of Professor Strife’s mouth.

“Should we tell him, do you think?” asked Hermione.

“God no, this is the best class we have,” said Ron. “Bet Loony’s eating it up, though.”

* * *

A second complaint found its way to Dumbledore that week. This one seemingly legitimate, about Cloud’s apparent lack of knowledge of his own subject matter. Dumbledore liked to consider himself open-minded, but the existence of a river of souls at the centre of the earth was perhaps even a bit beyond his own willingness to believe.

...What country had the young man said he was from, again?

**Author's Note:**

> Cloud 100% gets fired at the end of the school year 
> 
> I suppose I'll take requests on further segments while I go back and actually finish this because you seriously have no idea how heartbroken I am I couldn't get this thing done in time.
> 
> EDIT: Hey wow okay. Given the bizarrely enthusiastic response to this thing I figure I should let everyone know a full-length fic of this is in the works, with plot and chapters and worldbuilding and shit, covering the events of books 4 and 5. Full outline is more or less done, trying to fine-tune character arc stuff now. Release date TBA.


End file.
